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disregard for human life that characterizes journalists. “Suppose you give me your version of events, Mr. Kerr?”
    He puffed on the cigar and I tried not to cough. “Like I said, I thought this note was some crank. Then, last week, we had a phone call from the police. They said a publican had dropped down dead at work. It seemed he’d just opened a fresh container of KerrSter. That’s a universal cleanser that we produce. One of our biggest sellers to the trade. Anyway, according to the postmortem, this man had died from breathing in cyanide, which is ridiculous, because cyanide doesn’t go anywhere near the KerrSter process. Nobody at our place could work out how him dying could have had anything to do with the KerrSter,” he said defensively. “We weren’t looking forward to the inquest, I’ll be honest, but we didn’t see how we could be held to blame.”
    â€œAnd?” I prompted him.
    Kerr shifted in his seat, moving his weight from one buttock to the other in a movement I hadn’t seen since Dumbo . “I swear I never connected it with the note I’d had. It’d completely slipped my mind. And then this morning, this came.” His pudgy hand slid into his inside pocket again and emerged with a folded sheet of paper. He held it out towards me.
    â€œHas anyone apart from you touched this?” I asked, not reaching for it.
    He shook his head. “No. It came to the house, just like the other one.”
    â€œPut it down on the desk,” I said, raking in my bag for a pen and my Swiss Army knife. I took the eyebrow tweezers out of their compartment on the knife and gingerly unfolded the note. It was a sheet from a glue-top A4 pad, hole-punched, narrow feint and margin. Across it, in straggling newsprint letters Sellotaped down, I read, “Bet you wish you’d done what you were told. We’ll be in touch. No cops. We’re watching you.” The letters were a mixture of upper and lower case, and I recognized the familiar fonts of the Manchester Evening Chronicle . Well, that narrowed it down to a few million bodies.

    I looked up and sighed. “On the face of it, it looks like your correspondent carried out his threat. Why haven’t you taken this to the police, Mr. Kerr? Murder and blackmail, that’s what they’re there for.”
    Kerr looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t think they’d believe me,” he said awkwardly. “Look at it from their point of view. My company’s products have been implicated in a major tampering scandal. A man’s dead. Can you imagine how much it’s going to cost me to get out from under the lawsuits that are going to be flying around? There’s nothing to show I didn’t cobble this together myself to try and get off the hook. I bet mine are the only fingerprints on that note, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the police aren’t going to waste their time hunting for industrial saboteurs they won’t even believe exist. Anyway, the note says ‘No cops.’ ”
    â€œSo you want me to find your saboteurs for you?” I asked resignedly.
    â€œCan you?” Kerr asked eagerly.
    I shrugged. “I can try.”
    Before we could discuss it further, there was a knock at the door and our hostess’s head appeared. “Sorry to interrupt, Trevor, but we’re about to distribute the treasure-hunt clues, and I know you’d hate to start at a disadvantage.” She didn’t invite us to join in, I noticed. Clearly my suit didn’t come up to scratch.
    â€œBe right with you, Charmian,” Trevor said, hauling himself out of his chair. “My office, half past eight tomorrow morning?” he asked.
    I had a lot more questions for Trevor Kerr, but they could wait. “I thought you were worried about me coming to the office?” I reminded him.
    He barely paused on his way out the door. “I’ll tell my secretary